British National Corpus and Time Magazine Corpus

Dear friends,

could you halp me learn how to use British National Corpus and Time Magazine Corpus (they seem to be alike).

I tried to read help but it seems to have been not very helpful.

Let us have a look at an example:
I want to find out whether it is possible to say "This company is comfortable to deal with".

In other words, whether it is possible to ust the adjective "comfortable" as a predicative and an infinitive after it.

So I type:
search string: comfortable to
context: [v*] - 0 , 1
pos list: verb.all

And get "Sorry, there are no matching records".

But if I use just search string: comfortable to, I can found

it is comfortable to sit in while the gas is
it was more comfortable to run on his

And a lot of other examples.

So, I suppose I just don't know how to use these corpora.

Michael

Another example:

The game was easy to watch.

game/was easy
to watch (infinitve used as an adjective to was easy)

Try this URL UCREL CLAWS7 Tagset

It has a list of tags with their explanations after them and they work in the database, so it makes it easier. I would start with a single word, then add a single tag from the pos list, which is probably the one you will use most, so take an adjective like the one you chose, then try it out with the prepositions that come after it, then try adding multiple tags. It can take a bit of getting used to, but is well worth the time. I am about to go abroad for a few days, but will return to this thread when I am back online, which will be around Saturday. Sorry to rush but I will take some time over a reply as I like these sites a lot, but I haven't got any time now. ;-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grablevskij

Dear friends,

could you halp me learn how to use British National Corpus and Time Magazine Corpus (they seem to be alike).

I tried to read help but it seems to have been not very helpful.

Let us have a look at an example:
I want to find out whether it is possible to say "This company is comfortable to deal with".

In other words, whether it is possible to ust the adjective "comfortable" as a predicative and an infinitive after it.

So I type:
search string: comfortable to
context: [v*] - 0 , 1
pos list: verb.all

And get "Sorry, there are no matching records".

But if I use just search string: comfortable to, I can found

it is comfortable to sit in while the gas is
it was more comfortable to run on his

And a lot of other examples.

So, I suppose I just don't know how to use these corpora.

Michael

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Hi, Grablevskij. I'm using the corpora every day and I find it very very useful. I had once the same puzzle as you do now. That was because I didn't know how to find the right tags. I wrote an email to Mark Davies and he told me to click on the POS LIST (on the left side of the search page) and select from its drawdown what I want, and click on the part of speech I choose, then the right tag will appear in the word(s) box. In your case, you can type in:
[n*] [be] comfortable to [v?i]

Here [n*] comes from clicking on 'noun ALL';(I use [n*] to avoid the result of 'it' as the subject.)
[be] means the results can be is/am/are/was/were/be/been/being.
[v?i] comes from clicking on 'verb INF'.

I'm sure you will get satisfying results.

And you might want to note that there some different tags between the three corpora: [aj*] means adj in BNC while [j*] means adj in COCA. But we don't need to memorize them. Just click on the POS LIST and they are there for us to use.
I'm hoping it helps
and enjoy using the corpora!

joham

Thank you.

Dear Michael,

I typed 'comfortable to' on British National Corpus and i got the answers. Try doing this.

Getulio